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DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

torrentfreak.com

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Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#111

Post by troyvit »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #24

I suspect this is largely due to DDG using Bing under the hood, which has led to similar weirdness in the past, eg all major porn sites disappearing from the results in Singapore (while Google still showed them, mind you!). Still super disappointing though, and yet another reason why trying to build a better search engine on top of someone else's tech is a non-starter.

I don't see how it's a non-starter. DDG is still a better search engine than bing, if for no other reason than bangs. If a censored search engine is the non-starter then every well-known search engine is a non-starter.

Maybe that's the real problem. There have been some recent articles on HN about how "search is broken" and maybe this article falls under that. Because what really gets me is that there is plenty of legit content on "pirate sites" and blocking them completely cuts off that content.

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#112

Post by zodzedzi »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #71
zodzedzi wrote: post #69

I use DDG as my default search engine, along with NoScript in the browser. Often when I visit a new website, I peruse the (long) list of domains that the site is trying to pull javascripts from. I keep most of those source sites in UNTRUSTED status (including some of the big names in search/ads/etc). But I've always had DDG in the TRUSTED category because I had only seen its javascript before on the main DDG website.…

Can you give us a list (or partial list) of sites that are pulling scripts from duckduckgo? We can look at what they're trying to do.

I don't remember the sites; I'll try to find them again, and will share here if I do.

I remember seeing 3 sites within an hour, and deciding to change the DDG setting to TEMP:TRUSTED afterwards.

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#113

Post by dirtyv »

zionic wrote: post #94

Just switched. Lets see how well brave search works out :)

I absolutely do not trust Brave. I tried their browser on my iPhone for a few months. Always chose the most private settings, don't save history, etc, so whenever I opened the app there was no evidence it had even been used before. After one particular update, I started the app and it opened up literally dozens of tabs. Going through them I realized each tab was a site I had visited in the past. Left a nasty review on the App store that they never responded to, but they pushed out another update almost immediately. Never again. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if years from now we find out the CIA was behind Brave, like they were with Crypto AG

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#114

Post by scarygliders »

barnabee wrote: post #26

I don’t need these results but I don’t want to support this behaviour/trend. Can anyone recommend a decent non-Google alternative.

Self-hosted SearXNG [0]

Have your own search aggregator.

[0] https://github.com/searxng/searxng

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#115

Post by zodzedzi »

z3c0 wrote: post #80
zodzedzi wrote: post #69

I use DDG as my default search engine, along with NoScript in the browser. Often when I visit a new website, I peruse the (long) list of domains that the site is trying to pull javascripts from. I keep most of those source sites in UNTRUSTED status (including some of the big names in search/ads/etc). But I've always had DDG in the TRUSTED category because I had only seen its javascript before on the main DDG website.…

> Unfortunately NoScript has a limitation that you can't tell it to "only TRUST javascript from example.com when I'm visiting example.com" I was under the impression that the custom option allowed this. Am I misunderstanding the point of this option?

I see "Custom" allowing you to choose which elements (frame, fonts, etc.) to allow/block for the domain you're configuring.

But it doesn't offer the ability to say "apply these settings to the domain example.com only when I'm visiting example.com, and not when I'm visiting anotherexample.com which happens to load JS from example.com".

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#116

Post by scarygliders »

tandav wrote: post #78

Private search aggregation engine https://github.com/searx/searx

Exactly.

Installed that recently and been using it for a few weeks - it's great to self-host one's own search aggregator and I'm very impressed with the results.

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#117

Post by zodzedzi »

mormegil wrote: post #93
zodzedzi wrote: post #69

I use DDG as my default search engine, along with NoScript in the browser. Often when I visit a new website, I peruse the (long) list of domains that the site is trying to pull javascripts from. I keep most of those source sites in UNTRUSTED status (including some of the big names in search/ads/etc). But I've always had DDG in the TRUSTED category because I had only seen its javascript before on the main DDG website.…

> (Unfortunately NoScript has a limitation that you can't tell it to "only TRUST javascript from example.com when I'm visiting example.com"). uMatrix (which I'm using in desktop Firefox) works exactly like this. Plus it allows you to forbid/allow cookies, styles, images, scripts, media, XHR, and iframes separately (for each origin/domain).

Ok I'll set it up sometime soon and give it a try. Thanks.

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#118

Post by etataetaet »

cato_the_elder wrote: post #57
marpstar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aggregate from "over 400 sources" and run their own crawler: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

That's just their corporate propaganda. For the most part, it's Bing with some additional features. Their crawler (DuckDuckBot) doesn't have much of an impact on the search results, it's mainly used to provide instant answers. [1] [1]: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...

To be fair the instant answers are usually quite good!

Re: DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

#119

Post by zodzedzi »

freedomben wrote: post #86
zodzedzi wrote: post #69

I use DDG as my default search engine, along with NoScript in the browser. Often when I visit a new website, I peruse the (long) list of domains that the site is trying to pull javascripts from. I keep most of those source sites in UNTRUSTED status (including some of the big names in search/ads/etc). But I've always had DDG in the TRUSTED category because I had only seen its javascript before on the main DDG website.…

I run uMatrix and have noticed some DDG showing up on other sites as well. The sites in question appeared to be (at least ostensibly) using it as a "can I reach the internet" sort of check. If I blocked requests, it would say something to the effect of "no connection detected." I wish I could remember which sites they were, but I do remember seeing at least one call to improving.duckduckgo.com from a 3rd party.

Ok interesting. I'll try to find those sites I encountered again and check it out with uMatrix.
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